The Creatures of Usher (The Originals)
by ibizababy
Summary: The Originals AU. After Hayley's unseen death, Klaus & Rebekah discover Hope has fallen ill under strange circumstances while Elijah turns away from the family with a ripper lifestyle. But coming together lies in the news of a new family in New Orleans: siblings Abigail, Victor, & Vladimir. Abigail could have a cure for Hope—perhaps she even has Klaus' heart.
1. Abigail's Awake

"There's three of them. Two men, one girl. Supposed to be the original owners," the stranger said. She stood with her fellow vampire as they looked up at the thin, colonial style home enveloped in trees that most respectably had been growing there for centuries. "Think Marcel knows who they are? The Mikaelsons?" the male vampire asked her. Just then, they both looked to see a young man standing in the double doors of the house, his dark Lennon glasses hiding his gaze. They could physically feel it was them he looked at. He wore a black dress shirt and slacks to go with the black hair they could see on his head. He appeared to be enjoying a smoke as he returned their stare. "Whatever...let's go," the female vampire swallowed. The man in the doorway only watched as they disappeared at a vampire speed as smoke drifted off his lips. "Wind is picking up South of here, forty-nine miles per hour. Which means she's been buried North, in the fields around the city's most populous plain; hopefully, her own impulsiveness is the only thing that's decayed about her. I'd hope her magic made up for everything else," he said, almost speaking to himself, "You promised her no more than a day past today that she should wake..."

In the back room, the man's brother broke a sweat while he used a forensics blade to dissect the body before him. "Polish the broomstick, sharpen the hat, catch some spiders to feed the bat and then you may continue to yowl with the cat," the brother recited exhaustedly. He then picked up his stitching scissors as kept his eyes on the body. "You'll not say that around her when she comes home, Victor," the man at the door replied with a light smirk. He adjusted his glasses as he slowly shut the door.

* * *

Hope cried relentlessly as the wind outside howled as if its next step were to have a monsoon of a tantrum. Rebekah sighed as she came in, picking up the sweet little girl who continued to cry. "Hush now, Love," she muttered to the little one. She shut the swinging blinds as she sat down in the nursery with Hope. It'd been so long since a storm erupted in the city, it was almost a situation they didn't know how to cope with. Hope's small, glistening tears didn't stop as she clung to Rebekah's jacket. "Your daddy will be back soon," Rebekah promised her. She looked up to see Elijah walking down the hall. "Elijah," she called. She watched as he paused and turned to look at her. He was covered in blood from his lips to his chest. Rebekah swallowed as she didn't say anything more. Hayley was gone—it was an unimaginable defeat toward the Mikaelsons and no one was taking it harder than Elijah. Klaus seemed to be in a mood most of the time, and being near Hope was the only thing that could calm him down; Rebekah had lost a friend, but she knew it was time to move on at this point in time. Marcel had come back into reign of the city with Klaus' uncooperative attitude, and Rebekah herself found a relationship with Marcel.

Elijah continued down the hall to his room and he began to remove his bloody shirt, his gaze cold and sullen. The power had been out since the winds started in the early hours, which kept his room lit with hundreds of candles. Klaus appeared in the doorway, arms crossed as he watched Elijah select a fresh shirt from his armoire. "Happy huntings?" he asked. Not a word from Elijah. "Your continuous moping is bringing poor fortune to this family, I hope you know. You've become the beast I have been time and again," Klaus noted. Elijah buttoned up his shirt as he fixed himself a glass of jack and watched the torturous winds out in the city. "Am I the only one who truly cares about the death of yet another family member?" Elijah asked calmly. "You understand that's not true at all. Hayley didn't deserve what happened...but we have to go on and raise Hope in her absence. And figure out how revenge may be extracted onto those responsible—whether or not there is collateral damage, but I'm assuming collateral damage is the delicacy dripping from your chin at the moment," Klaus replied. Elijah walked past as he balled up the bloody shirt in his hands and disappeared into one of the many rooms of the Compound.

Klaus looked back out the windows of Elijah's room as the wind picked up once more. He frowned as the lights flickered for a moment only to leave the existing career of illumination to the candles in the room. Storms didn't just pick up like this in Louisiana without warnings of a hurricane somewhere along the way. This was possibly a witch's doing.

* * *

The bayou was home to the wolves, a peaceful pack and family. But peace was far from their favorite word today of all days, not being allowed in the French Quarter for cover by treaty with the vampires. "Come on, we'll get some firewood and then we'll get going. They won't let us off the hook without some," one wolf said to another member of the pack. They looked around the most open spot in the bayou forests as the other tried to get rid of his frustrations. "It's ridiculous. For one day can't they just let us take over the church or something? We've got kids here!" the other growled. "It'll be alright, man. Let's just hope that this is no worse than the storm scare last Summer," his friend said. He took out his hatchet as he came over to a stump off to the side of the open center. The other steaming wolf looked around cautiously when he frowned. "Do you hear that?" he asked. "Hear what? The wind?" the other asked in fatigue.

His friend looked around as he chopped down the infant tree, when he felt his friend grab the back of his plaid shirt. "Marcus! Marcus!" he whispered violently as he pulled him to his side. "What's going on with you!" the other wolf, Marcus said. Marcus let his hatchet at his side as he looked where is partner pointed. The ground was ridden with life...it's center pulsing with inhale and exhale. "What the hell is that, Ollie?" Marcus growled quietly, hitting the other's chest. The second wolf, Ollie, held his arm out in front of Marcus to keep him from moving or making a sound. They jumped as a pure pearl-colored hand arose from the dirt and gripped the land beside it. The hand was attached to a limber arm...attached to a head of filthy licorice hair and a bare back with spinal detail. The woman who unearthed herself from mother nature was completely bare as she weakly stood covered in dirt looking at the two men over her shoulder. Her eyes were a shocking baby blue that only added to the fear Marcus and Ollie felt now.

"Who are you?" Ollie demanded, taking the hatchet from Marcus. She turned to them fully, her hair in perfect ringlets that covered her breasts with their thick volume. With a sinfully tantalizing voice, she replied, "Surely, your maker could tell you that." Her arm outstretched, her hand in the form of a clawing motion as Marcus suddenly disappeared into the tall of the trees shrieking. Ollie screamed his name as he looked back at the woman, lunging for her with the hatchet. An unseen force tackled him out of her way as she closed her eyes turning her face up to the sky. Marcus' warm veins now rained over her dirt-covered creme skin, as she licked him off her face and never let him come down. "Sister's home," she purred as she walked on, leaving Ollie unconscious.


	2. Klaus meets the Brothers

"Elijah!" Ollie all but screamed as he limped into the Compound's gates. "Klaus!" he yelled. His voice broke with each try. Elijah frowned as he started to descend the steps into the courtyard seeing the injured Ollie. "You'll disrupt the peace in the  
house with those screams," he sighed. "Something happened. Out in the bayou, it was magic. I know it when I see it!" he spat, "It was a girl. A girl just—crawled up from the ground, killed Marcus instantly-!" "What's all the racket about?" Rebekah  
said as she joined them. "How the hell do I explain something like this? You need to come to the bayou _now_. I saw which way she went," Ollie growled. Elijah put on his jacket, his face staying emotionless as he looked to Rebekah then Ollie.  
"Whatever happens in the bayou isn't our concern. You may want to try Marcel's sympathies," Elijah told Ollie. "Elijah, he's hurt and he came all this way to tell us whatever he's babbling about. Now what girl?" Rebekah said irritably. Ollie swallowed  
as he tried to tell the story in a calmer fashion now. This had to be taken to Klaus, with Marcel living up to being king of the vampires at the moment.

* * *

The woman sat back in the large armchairs of her old family den, a classical tune of piano and violin duo playing from behind her. The tragic movements of the song displayed the opposite of her mood, as apathetic as any nonliving thing. The man in his  
Lennon glasses leaned in the doorway watching her, the front door swinging back and forth in the calming winds. She closed her eyes as she slowly leaned her head back. "Abel Korzeniowski. He's no Isaac Albéniz...but nothing can cure a grouchy feeling  
like an assortment of miserable strings," her perfect English accent rang. "You'll forever be an antique at heart," the man, her brother, said. She looked at him out of the corner of her eye. "I've missed you, Abi," the man said genuinely.

"Hello, my dear Vladimir," the girl, Abigail, replied kindly. The girl's eldest brother, Vladimir, removed his Lennon glasses while he came over and placed a gentle kiss on his sister's hand. "Let's get you into a bath," he suggested to his young sister,  
Abigail. He placed his fine suede jacket around her as he escorted her upstairs. Victor watched from the house foyer, bloody surgeon utensils in his hands as he watched them.

* * *

"...I've never seen a witch do that. If she was one. I didn't know what else to do—she didn't go after the rest of the pack or me. She wandered off toward the residential areas...I was hoping you might have known about this," Ollie told the three of them.  
Klaus sat across from him in the dining area, Elijah at the head of the table and Rebekah beside her brother, Klaus. "Unfortunately, its been a while since have we had a case of waking zombie witches on a random day in June," Klaus said mockingly.  
"What did she look like?" Rebekah sighed. "...She was beautiful. Dark hair, blue eyes...walking around in Marcus' blood," Ollie muttered, drinking the scotch Elijah had brought him,"I was going to ask the witches about her next, but the more I think  
about it, they're probably dead by now. That was no human, that was _a hungry animal._ The wind storm stopped right after she walked off, and I'm thinking now that is no coincidence."

Klaus exchanged glances with Rebekah and Elijah. "Is there any place she could have left her tracks?" Rebekah asked. Ollie swallowed as he tried to stand. "I was so in a rush to get here...I didn't check your old plantation house or the one across from  
it. Those are the first two homes you see before entering the Quarter from the bayou territory," Ollie groaned. Rebekah helped him stand as she gave Niklaus a warning look. "I'm fine," Ollie said as he regained a tall composure, "I need to go back  
and warn the wolves...you need to warn the other vampires and the witches." "Rebekah stay with hope. I'm going with Ollie to the bayou. Elijah, you'll go see the witches, but I suggest refraining from killing them first," Klaus instructed.

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Klaus took Ollie into the private residence on the edge of the Quarter, Ollie bringing him to a stop in front of the Mikaelson mansion. "She's here, somewhere...I can smell Marcus," Ollie growled. Klaus looked around and stopped upon gaze across from  
his old plantation home. There it was: that house. Living back in this part of the Quarter when he first arrived in Louisiana, there was never a day when he wouldn't look at the house and wonder why so many feared it. It was enveloped in trees,  
not quite as big as Mikaelsons' land, but rumored to have a private graveyard beyond its acres. He never thought about it enough to find out. Elijah had tried to introduce himself a number of times, but no one ever answered. Rebekah only remembered  
seeing a young woman in her corset in the attic window in the night.

Klaus stopped upon seeing something glisten in the sunlight breaking through the dark clouds. Blood, to be axact. The bloody print was in the shape of a small foot, that walked straight up to the House of Usher. "Looks like she fancies herself a haunted  
house," Klaus commented, walking toward it with Ollie.

* * *

Victor huffed as he moved to the kitchen, filling up the sink with water as he dropped in his bloody gloved hand full of tools. The house creaked as he shut off the sink. Looking outside, Victor could now witness the monstrosity of a wind storm dying  
down. Hell only let one demon out of the ground for today. Suddenly a fierce knock came at the door, taking Victor's attention. His supplies dropped to the metal grounds of the sink with a light _clink_ under water.

Standing in front of the door once more, his piercing blue eyes narrowed as his ringed hand slowly wrapped around the doorknob. Opening the door, he looked to see Klaus and Ollie. "You must be the owner of Usher," Klaus said kindly, "I'm looking for  
a young girl, perhaps covered in blood?" Victor knew a malicious smile when he saw one, and he raised his face to Klaus'. "I beg your pardon, Mister Mikaelson. We haven't the time for visitors at the moment," Victor said in an eerie yet polite  
English accent. Klaus swallowed as he looked into Victor's eyes as he stepped closer to the door. "How do you know him?" Ollie asked. "I've lived here for centuries. I know everyone in New Orleans," Victor answered. "Where's the girl?" Klaus scowled.

"Victor!" Vladimir's voice called. Klaus and Ollie looked past Victor to see Vladimir's silhouette highlighted by the large romantic window at the head of the staircase. "Let them in. We're not going to be those kind of neighbors," Vladimir's American  
accent demanded. Victor looked at his feet as he hesitated before letting them in. "Mister Mikaelson, it's a pleasure," Vladimir said as he came down, extending his hand to Klaus, "My name is Vlad, this is my brother Victor. You'll have to forgive  
the ruckus we've caused today. Our sister has made it home and we're trying to pace her emotion of rejoining us." "Your sister killed my friend, a member of _my_ pack," Ollie spat. Vlad lit a cigarette as he gestured for them to follow him  
into the living area. "We'll punish her for that. She's just woken up from a terribly exhausting spell she placed on herself. It's been nearly a century and a half, so trying to reintroduce her to manners will be like trying to teach a puppy not  
to teeth on things," Vladimir chuckled through the smoke, taking off his glasses. "Your sister. Exactly what kind of witch, is she?" Klaus asked. "

"Your sister. Exactly what kind of witch, is she?" Klaus asked. " _The_ witch, actually," Victor stifled. Klaus turned to him. "Abigail Williams is her name, Mister Mikaelson," Vladimir added. Ollie scoffed. "You're kidding right? The Salem  
girl?" he questioned. "I hope you know she's probably listening to us. She's very sensitive about her age," Victor said as he strolled back to get his surgeon supplies. "Well, if she can hear us surely she can join us. I'd like to issue her a  
warning the next time she nearly forces a hurricane upon us," Klaus said in a husky voice. "Well, I'd be delighted to let you issue the warning at our upcoming party Friday night. I'm sure she'd be happy to make nice. I think our little family  
of three needs its friends, as well," Vladimir smiled.

Abigail sat up in her orange-tinted bath as she rolled her head to the side listening. "It's a formal party, let's not forget," she muttered under her breath. As if her word was whispered right into his ear, Victor walked past them, drying off his  
tools as he added. "It's formal. Everyone who's interested may join us," Vlad added. Klaus' mischievous smirk never left his face as he looked around the room one last time. "Very well. It was a pleasure to meet you at last, Mister _Vlad_ ,"  
Klaus said in the same manner as the brothers.

Abigail, in her finest silk robe, watched from the very top railing of the staircase, as Klaus walked to the door. He looked back at the staircase when he paused. Her cheek rested on a small fist as she watched him in fatigue. Her long hair went a  
little past the top of the railing as she looked down at him, crystal drops of water falling from her tips. The grey light coming from the large floral-designed window caught the oceans of her eyes that made it hard for him to look away. Victor  
shut the door behind Klaus as he took his leave, looking back up at his sister. "Hello, my little Victor," she said in a quiet echo of their empty home. "Are the beaches in hell warm this time of year?" he asked her. She smiled cheaply watching  
Victor return to his workspace among his corpses.


	3. Monsters of the Ball

Friday night came quickly, Rebekah, Elijah, and Klaus intrigued yet anxious to see what more secrets the doors of the Usher house had to offer. People poured in and out of the large home doorways, music playing loudly. Klaus and his siblings maneuvered through a crowd of tuxedos and party dresses just to walk inside those doors. "Abigail Williams? Is that some sort of play on the name or does she truly think that high of herself?" Rebekah said to Klaus as she walked in with him on his arm. Elijah looked around, frowning at the smell of blood. "It's everywhere," Klaus said, noticing his brother's face. Elijah looked back at him as he fixed his bowtie, looking around. "What exactly are we here to do? Terrorize them for a small incident?" Elijah asked.

"Mikaelsons," they heard. They looked to see the young, handsome Victor approaching them.

His poisonous graying eyes wouldn't meet theirs as he kept them busy around the room. "Welcome comes from Vladimir and Abigail. Let me show you to the ballroom," the kinder side of his accent told them. "You must be Victor," Rebekah sighed as they followed him down a stretched hallway filled with guests eyeing the four. Vincent turned to them as he placed a hand on the ballroom door, as grand as the home entrance doors. The ballroom was very dim with only the sparkle of centuries-old crystal chandeliers and wall lamps to make it seem like the edge of a fire's glow all around. "...Mr. Frankenstein will do," he replied in a deep tone of voice. Klaus and his family frowned. "Excuse me?" she asked in disbelief. He turned back to them with some champagne in hand, his expression frostbitten. "Mr. Frankenstein. It's...German. Please enjoy yourselves," Victor repeated, as he dipped his head and took his leave. Half of the ballroom looked at the Mikaelsons in surprised; were they friends of this family no one knew for so long? "'Frankenstein'... It's been a while since I enjoyed a party in the presence of a family of madmen," Elijah commented.

Klaus looked around, hoping his eyes would automatically latch onto the girl he saw a few days ago, Abigail. In the short talks he'd had with these brothers, they summed up to be either delusional or something he never knew could exist. _The girl who delivered fellow witches to their maker for centuries, the man who could create life but fail to care for it...the only person who seemed to be an everyday face was Vlad,_ Klaus thought. Vlad sat on a couch with a few young girls, pawing at his chest and hanging on to his every word. Klaus and Elijah appeared on the loveseat across from him, Vlad slowly looking at them as if he'd expected the company. "Niklaus Mikaelson. You've made it. And you must be Elijah," Vlad said as he sat up to take a drink of his murky looking drink. Vladimir gestured for a servant to bring them a second glass, the servant placing it in front of the Mikaelson brothers. "We've had some kind souls donate themselves for tonight's refreshments. Nothing a little sweet talk can't do for you," Vladimir chuckled. Klaus smirked as he joined Vladimir in the drink. "I can see you are in the mood for making more than just some friends tonight, Mr. Williams," Elijah said over the music. "On the contrary, we've invited a majority of the people we've known for some time. But it's always good to show new acquaintances how our little family of three works. Isn't that right, my dearests?" Vlad said looking to the girls on either side of him, "If you need anything at all tonight from me, old sports, please do not hesitate to tell me. I'd like for your family to be comfortable with us, our families are so alike."

"It's been a long time since I heard someone brave enough to take that claim," Klaus simpered. Elijah polished off the blood in the fine glass cup like it was alcohol aged just right. Vlad smiled as he nodded, running his fingers over the bloody holes he'd put in one of the girl's necks with his fangs. "Tell me, Vladimir, where exactly is your family from?" Elijah asked. "All over. My father wasn't exactly a man of commitment. My siblings were born in London two centuries apart, while I was made in my mother country of Italy, brought to America long before Columbus just to assure a home for them," Vlad answered. Klaus narrowed his eyes, his smirk not even flinching. The orchestra suddenly sat back as a younger duo of men stepped out with acoustic guitars, men all over the room taking their dates to the dancefloor. "Ah, she's so dramatic. She's decided to come after all," Vladimir said, his attention directing toward the door on the far side of the room. Elijah and Klaus followed his gaze as an obscurely dark and beautiful theme braved from the strum of the musicians' acoustics.

Two servants opened the door as a set of nude heels walked through the door. The dim chandeliers all over the room made it hard to see Abigail's face in total. Vladimir promised his company he'd return as he gestured for Klaus and Elijah to follow him in meeting Abigail. Abigail took a glass of blood from one of the servants in a daze as she watched the musicians, tuning out anyone who recognized her and dared to say hello. She wore a golden, side-laced-up bustier with a black asymmetrical pencil skirt and golden cross choker she'd loved and worn for centuries. Her hair had been perfectly tousled with a mountain of waves over her shoulder. Vladimir kissed her hand as she continued to watch. " _South of Heaven's Chanting Mermaids_...you know how I love this song," she said contentedly to Vladimir. "I thought I'd surprise you," Vladimir laughed, "Niklaus, Elijah. This is my sister Abigail Williams."

Abigail slowly turned her head to the Mikaelson brothers as she smiled malignantly. "My, aren't you a handsome pair?" she said seductively. Elijah smiled as politely as he could despite his bloody form of brooding; he'd already moved onto his second glass of blood. "I don't think I've ever met a Mikaelson," she said as she scanned Elijah. Klaus could feel something in his chest freeze over in awe as he slowly took her hand, kissing it. She smiled kindly at him, as he looked back at her. "Well, I don't believe we've ever met one of Salem's finest," Klaus purred. "You were here just the other day. I recognize your voice," Abigail noted. "We've come precisely for that reason. It seems you've murdered an innocent," Elijah said, over his brother's swooning. "I know, I've already issued as best of an apology to the wolves as I could. But I can't help myself sometimes, I'm afraid. I get a little moody," she said, whispering the last excerpt to Klaus innocently. Elijah narrowed his eyes as Abigail as she looked back to the musicians. God, she sounded just like Klaus himself—right down to the accent. Klaus smiled at her in amusement, Elijah noticing almost immediately. His brother only ever smiled like that on occasion.

"Why don't one of you take my sister for a dance? I promise she doesn't bite unless asked," Vladimir chuckled. Abigail caught Klaus' insisting gaze as she handed her glass to Vladimir, taking his hand and leading him toward the dance floor.

* * *

Victor stood in the back of the room, as Rebekah appeared next to him. "It's been a long time since I'd been to a decent party that wasn't one of our own," she complimented. "My brother is real Gatsby, you could say," Victor told her, "I can sense my name caused a bit of a shock for you and your brothers. It always does, but not like my brother's. Dracula is a cruel name to bare." Rebekah looked at Victor in confusion with a small half-smile on her face. "You're making jokes now?" she asked. He looked at her in complete sincerity as her smile faded. "...You're all incredibly off your rocker," she scoffed. "We take that as a compliment," Victor replied, looking at her out of the corner of his eye, "It's demeaning to have published works about the horror you've caused to a society who are the real monster of the ball. My sister's name may be the only one that gains true respect." "Welcome to the club. History's Most Wanted," Rebekah sighed. "It has its perks...I'd be happy to share if you'd care to dance," Victor offered. Rebekah's straight face curved a smiled as she took his hand and he led her to the floor.

* * *

He couldn't take his eyes off her. The skin of her arm on the back of his neck was cold to the touch and her smell was enticing. Like all things beautiful, he knew she had to be poisonous. "You don't speak much, do you, Love?" Klaus said. A half-smile spread on her lips as she looked back into his green eyes with her deep blues. "I figure I'd let you continue to stare," Abigail simpered. Klaus grinned back at her. "I've heard you're the king in charge, Niklaus," she then added quietly. "It's complicated at the moment," he replied. "I see. New Orleans is a difficult city to contain, from what I remember," Abigail told him, "Its character is dangerous sometimes." "Is that what prompts you to stay here after waking up under its soil?" Klaus questioned. "If it wasn't at least a little threatening, there'd be no reason to stay, don't you think?" Abigail laughed under her breath. "Perhaps one day you'll let me show you all it has to offer," he breathed, gradually pulling her closer. She was no fool, seeing how hard he was trying to make her feel the attraction in return to his. She brought her chest a little closer to his, her gaze hardly breaking from its sultry state. "We'll see," she said in return. He could feel her living breath on his lips as she spoke. He was tempted, acknowledging that's what she intended. "I like you, Nik. I can tell your not the monstrous hybrid people once told me you were," Abigail continued. "I think I could say the same about you, Abigail," Klaus said, watching her tilt her head. "You can call me Abi if you'd like. It's easier to say. _Or scream_ ," she induced, sliding her arms off his neck. Her hands squeezed his shoulders on the way down to his chest as she brushed past him to find her brothers. Klaus smiled smugly as he watched her go.

* * *

Elijah fed off one of the girls Vlad had offered to him while Vlad watched and smoked his daily cigarette in the corridors with him. "The bloodlust in your eyes spells grief, my friend. I don't enforce the advice, but you mustn't let your demons take advantage," Vladimir stated. Elijah slowly let the unconscious girl on the ground as he wiped his mouth with the handkerchief Vladimir offered up. "There are too many points to plot for you of where that began," Elijah replied. "I never asked," Vladimir declared. Elijah looked out the life-size window at the very end of the hall as he licked the rusty taste off the roof of his mouth. "There's a room here...dirtied with corpses. What for?" Elijah asked. A tired body language came over Vlad as he shook his head and explained, " ...My brother is forever haunted by the loss of his mother, mine and Abi's one of many half-mothers. He's obsessed with death—what it can do and why. Shelley couldn't ever cover the true tales his life keeps...turning his tragedies into mystifying terror tales just like fucking Stoker."

"I never read them. I thought I knew all of the mysteries of the undead. But I know history...and I always did believe there was a truth behind those fables. We just never believed we'd meet them and be intimidated by them within just a point in time," Elijah claimed. Vlad looked at him. "We intimidate the Original family?" he asked in amusement. Elijah's smile grew lightly. "Perhaps startle us is a better phrase," he answered. "...I don't think it's us you need to be frightened by Elijah. It's the battle you've been fighting since we arrived. Abigail's had visions of it," Vladimir mumbled to Elijah. Elijah frowned. "Is that why you've asked me to speak privately?" he questioned. "Niklaus' daughter is ill, Elijah...Hope is fatally affected by someone's magic," Vladimir answered, "Abigail did a reading of your family. And she's willing to help Hope. She asked me to tell you so that the party wouldn't be disrupted in some form or the other."

"How can we trust that its not her that's making the child sick?" Elijah growled. Vladimir grabbed Elijahs collar suddenly, Elijah not able to shake him. "Because, Mister Mikaelson. Despite how this news might make you feel about us—our family has bigger problems than the Mikaelson family's suspicions. And we need allies, but allies aren't found by asking nicely. There needs to be some for of trade doesn't there? We will save Hope if you help us fight the Devil when it comes to town," Vladimir growled.


	4. Vladimir & the Serpent

**Florence, Italy, 1076**

"Vladimir?" a woman called as she walked down a thin hallway of a luxurious scene. Her dress' train was as long as any venomous snake's, its movements similar to it. No servants were to be found, not even the visitors, and Vladimir's eldest brothers had gone to war. All were shocked that the events following Vladimir's sister and fiancée's death, Vladimir dropped at even the most delicate touch of unforeseen illness himself. The woman's steps hastened at the sound of screaming. Vladimir panted and moved restlessly in his bed, his shirt torn off at the center of his torso and sweat covering him from head to toe. The woman burst into the room, freezing over in tear as she looked toward the regal bed her son lied in his own sweat and blood upon. He clutched his neck that bled relentlessly as cried out in pain. Vladimir's mother took a step closer when she noticed it: the thin, slow-moving form of something that peeked its head from the covers and rose the thicker half of its body to see his mother. He tried to shout for her to run, but instead, the blade of a silver sword came down to separate the serpent from the rest of his body. Vladimir sat up, his breath shaky and his hand trying to stop the bleeding of the bite.

Vladimir sat up, his breath shaky and his hand trying to stop the bleeding of the bite. His father, the holder of the blade, slowly looked up at Vladimir walking to his side as he removed his hand from the bite. Vladimir tilted his neck in pain of the frozen air hitting his wound, his father frowning at the sight of two large, fatally deep holes that dripped with fresh blood. No serpent's fangs were ever that big. It pulsed with a metallic gold liquid mixing with his blood to make a marble-designed wound. "There's venom...get the apothecary," his father demanded. He took off his fine leather gloves to hold onto Vladimir's hand, as he watched his wife run from the room.

* * *

An orchestra theme was always one of the few tortured echoes in the House of Usher that everyone ignored but Vladimir. His room was always filled with the sound of tragedy and unheard anger. Abigail truly hated his fascination with classical music, and it drove Victor mad if it ever put him out of concentration. Vladimir sat on the fine leather chair in his room as he listened to the score playing over his record player, staring at the hospice bag of blood that he held in one ringed hand. Victor always had a supply of them, using them to revive the bodies he had to work with and then send them off into a terrifying world where no one would ever pay them a shred of kindness. He hated the sight of it; someone else's life meant for his consumption. Abigail never had a problem drinking blood despite her half-human status, and he'd never want to wonder why or how. But Vladimir tried to put it out of his mind in the name of survival.

Victor walked down the hallway toward his bedroom when he stopped beside Abigail's door. He blinked slowly as he looked toward the dim ceiling of the hallway. Whispers. Whenever Abigail was awake as late as this, she was up to no good. "The music is bad enough. You're going to start your nightly prayer up again?" he said as he rolled his head in the direction of her slightly open doorway. He pushed open the door as looked inside for Abigail, but was greeted by an empty room with the whispers fading away.

Abigail sat in the attic, her eyes shut as she listened to the bodiless whispers herself. The attic was bare, except for a few paintings, old loveseat and cross nailed above the only window. The whispering she'd been hearing continued, caressing her with its compliments and its sensual persuasion. How she hated them...those voices. She could feel their nonexistent bodies against her back and taloned hands gripping the thick of the tresses spiraling down her back. Her eyes danced with anxiety in the light of the nearby religious candles she lit once she opened them. The whispers had died away. Her arm, which had been dancing at her side involuntarily, came to a stop. Her gaze went down the sketchpad of her lap. She stood as she looked at what she'd been drawing unconsciously. She slowly touched the surface of the dark, scaled shading while she shuttered. "Abi," Victor's rough yet gentle tone came from the doorway. She slowly turned to him as she shut the sketchpad, the shadow of her hair highlighting the hollows of her cheeks and placement of her eyes. "You're not trying to find it again, are you? Sometimes I wish you'd play with your gypsy cards instead of beckoning demons into our home" Victor sighed. "Going to be bothered by my magic once more, are you? My god, to this day you take one look at a broomstick and you run for the hills," Abigail teased.

"Abigail," Vladimir's voice called. Abigail squeezed Victor on the shoulder as she walked past, Victor slowly looking to the window in the attic. The cascade of morning's light coming through, cast a satin orange picture over one-half of Victor's face. He set his fist on the glass as he looked directly toward the incoming sun over the valleys in the distance, his jaw clenching. He never welcomed mornings. It seemed as though the sun's only purpose was to bring new harm to his family with every waking moment it shunned the earth's plea for one long summer night—when its undead could steal the spotlight for just a little longer and he could learn their secrets.

* * *

 **Florence, Italy, 1076**

Vladimir was growing weaker by the day. His mother went into despair with her eldest at war and her youngest suffering every moment that serpent's venom was in his system. His father, never to be disappointed, was prepared for the worst. Vladimir may have been the weakest of his offspring, perhaps the most deviant, but this was an illness a cure couldn't fix. Screaming, growling, foaming, violent attacks on himself and others— _what was happening to Vladimir_? "We have to," Vladimir's mother cried. "I am not murdering my own flesh and blood. This is my boy, he can come out of it," his father snapped at his mother. "Abraham, please-" "I do not condone it!" he shouted at her. "Lady Van Helsing," someone choked out from behind them. The Lady Van Helsing screamed out in terror, Vladimir's father pushing her behind him as he walked toward the dying servant. A large excerpt of her skin was missing from her neck as a thick substance drained from her neck causing immediate death. Vladimir's father, Abraham, looked toward the hallway where Vladimir cried out from. _No...his brothers. His brothers were in there with him_.

Abraham rushed to his youngest son's room to find four men in the room, only one alive. He clutched his chest at the horrid sight of his eldest's corpses on the stone-cold ground of Vladimir's room. Vladimir. had been chained to his bedpost, only one restraint withstanding his violent movements. He cried through his tormented screams, Abraham watching as his canines reshaped and lengthened themselves to be like an animal's. "Vladimir!" Abraham shouted. Vladimir's free hand pulled at the sharp fangs in his mouth, a loud and damp soundtrack coming from his gums as his abnormal strength permitted his sudden raw removal of one of the teeth. Abraham tried to near him, one hand secretly on the silver blade underneath his large winter coat. "I am sorry, father. Please...vanquish me," Vladimir wept. Blood collided with the saliva in his mouth as he set his forehead against the finely carved bedpost. Abraham slowly brought out his sword, looking miserably over his possessed son, a shallow breath coming off his lips as he looked around. Not one child left alive in the room. "What has become of you, Vladimir?" Abraham whispered violently, heartbrokenly.

Vladimir refused to look Abraham in the eye as he clawed at the snake bite that hadn't healed on his neck. "The Devil's devoured my soul. You can't let him take me in full!" Vladimir cried. His mother stood in the doorway frozen over in terror, or so it seemed. Abraham slowly reached to put a hand on his untamable son, who fatally crumbled under the pain and burden he now placed on himself. "I'm dying...I'm dying. I see him every time I look away from sunlight...every time I try and pull myself to my feet, father. I see him now," Vlad cried. "Where? Where Vladimir?" Abraham growled. "...In mother," Vladimir then replied.

* * *

Abigail descended down the staircase to answer Vladimir's call, stepping into his regal bedroom, covered from ceilings high to cherry-wood floors in paintings. He collected them, created them, mused about them. Abigail despised the walls that held nothing but portraits, and Victor repulsed none of them told an anecdote about the dark clouds on the horizon named "eventual fate." She stood in his doorway, her long and ruffled bohemian dress swaying as she stopped in the doorway. "The Mikaelsons. They're coming today," Vladimir said, looking to the large windows on the other side of the room. She sighed as she gave him an irritable look, going to shut the curtains. "I'm not going into that Quarter," she declared. Her accent's darker decorations came out with the bitter of her voice. "The child is ill...I know it leads back to-" "You've said that about many of our encounters," Abigail interrupted. "They're going to bring the child to you. It's motherless...not to mention the hybrid's. We need to cure it, or else _that thing_ will use the child against us. The child could be worse than its father," Vladimir spoke briefly. "It's a little girl, Vladimir. Not an 'it.' And that girl is irrelevant toward its goal: destroying us," Abi claimed, gently running a black-polished finger up the stem of his dying roses.

"I'm quite jealous. I haven't seen a collection quite as extensive as this," they heard. Abigail looked at Klaus in the doorway, taking in all the rows of paintings. "I haven't anymore room to put up the others. Do you paint, Niklaus?" Vladimir asked as he stood after finishing his blood bag. "It's more of a hobby," Klaus smirked. "I'd love to see it sometime. Perhaps you can persuade Abigail and Victor to appreciate it more while you visit today," Vladimir said as he gestured to Abigail. "Is your little one still in need?" Abigail asked smoothly. "I'm afraid that's why I've come. She's gotten worse, and the witches in the Quarter know me well enough not to try and assist my family," Klaus answered. She removed the dying roses from the vase as she nodded her head toward the door. Vladimir watched them go as the charismatic smile on his face drifted away.

* * *

 **Florence, Italy, 1076**

Vladimir's mother no longer cowered away from the scene in fear as she stood straight smirking. "What demon lurks in this room," Abraham demanded as he stood from beside Vladimir. A sharp and multi-toned Latin language erupted from deep within Vladimir's mother as spit flew from her lips and her eyes became bloodshot. Without hesitation, Vladimir's father lunged for his wife and vanquished his own wife and the demon inside her. Vladimir had successfully gotten out of his restraints, scratches and injuries dotting his muscular chest. Abraham turned to him slowly, but Vladimir was gone—and never to return. Abraham left Italy, hoping t forget the tragedies that had fallen all on just one day—but his mind always came back to Vladimir. The strange fatality of Vladimir that one day Abraham was going to be able to explain.

Vladimir no longer wanted to be a Van Helsing after hearing of his father's dire travels to seek out the demonic serpent that attacked him and made him a slave to sunlight and manipulation of human interaction. He took on the name Dracula to disguise his father's infamous name being his own. Word was Abraham Van Helsing was bitten by the very same serpent only a year after Vladimir, but was never to find it again afterwards. Vladimir was always dying to know not long after—the Serpent. Why did it choose him...and why would it go on to choose his father's other children, too?


	5. Just a Bite

Niklaus followed Abigail into the greenhouse behind Usher, amazed by the beauty of a thousand red roses that seemed almost pink in the sunrise. "I can see you're a green thumb," Klaus commented. "Not at all. It's Victor. But he refuses to tend to them these days ever since he started to hole himself up in that depressing morgue of his. I had to revive everything with my magic," Abigail replied genuinely as she gestured to a chair beside her. She took out a pair of scissors as she started to cut them off the lengthy vines that tangled themselves even around the adjacent window panes where the windows could no longer shut. "Tell me about Hope. What happened to her mother?" Abigail sighed. "I never told you anything happened to the mother," Klaus said suspiciously. Abigail set a rose aside as she looked at him blankly. "Witches call it hyper-intuition. Knowing something or someone by the very slightest brush of skins," Abigail replied. "Having a witch for a mother, I feel as though that's a tall tale," Klaus replied as he stood beside her. "Well, your mother's not a true witch then. Just tell me about Hope. That's why you're here," she went on.

His gaze drifted from the thick thorns of the roses beside him to Abi. He wished he could say Hope was all he was here for at the moment. "It began a month prior. She'd started to get a fever...cry chronically. And seldom it was in fear," Klaus explained bluntly and gradually. Abigail turned to him as she set the scissors down. "Did you see a bite anywhere? A large one?" she asked. "I've come to you because of a witch's doing not a werewolf's," Klaus sighed. "I never said a werewolf. It could be nothing. When I was a child, my mother told me I was always running a fever no matter how hard the doctors in the city tried to help me. If it were a witch's doing, it'd be easy to tell in a child. Magic can wear away a child's skin pigmentation, so Victor discovered," Abi theorized, "If that's the case, I can trace it back to its holder." Klaus picked up one of the roses as she finished. "And I suppose there'd be something you want in return," he said expectantly. She looked to the large pearl of blood on the tip of her thumb as she rubbed it between her fingers. "Lucky for you, Niklaus, you have nothing I'm in need of," she replied genuinely. He watched as she wiped her blood on one of the wilting roses, it's health restoring before his eyes. She didn't seem to think anything of it despite the amazement on his face to see he wasn't the only one who's blood had some sort of healing property. "I don't believe that, Love," Klaus smirked, searching for a hidden fee.

One of her dark curls fell over her shoulder as she smiled slightly. "Not everyone you meet requires a favor in return, Niklaus," she simpered, "Despite what books and tales tell contrary-wise, our family isn't foreign to good deeds." He still didn't quite have faith she required nothing, but he was willing to try. He would try for the sake of knowing her—the girl he knew would prove difficult, but he wanted to one day conquer. "Come on," she sighed as she walked past him. He grabbed her wrist before she could leave altogether, Abi turning to him. He took in her flawless features as she looked at him expectantly. She tilted her head, seeing the look in his eyes. He was expecting her to feel what he suddenly began to feel. She stood a little closer as she looked up at him. "You're wasting your time thinking about it," Abigail muttered to him. He swallowed, thinking about the fact that for once, he forgot how to speak. He forgot how to tease, he forgot how to seduce. Something about her dark ocean eyes paralyzed his careless personality. Abigail's hand clutched his chin and jawline gently as she locked eyes with him. "Just know that if you do, I'm not going to play your games," she whispered. He felt her lips brush his send a surge of ardor through his veins, Klaus suddenly gripping her hair as he pressed his lips to hers. She didn't kiss back with the same intensity, but the freezing temperatures of her hands on his neck was enough to drive him mad. He never felt this desperate intensity for any woman...what was happening to him? There were so many things he didn't know about Abigail—perhaps things he didn't even want to know. But he had to have her.

She felt one of his fangs cut her lips after she pulled away, he didn't look guilty in the slightest. He felt her tongue grace the surface of his lips gently, removing the blood she'd left behind. As if nothing happened, she took the roses off the wooden surface beside them, looking back at them. "Victor's coming. He doesn't like it when I bring company in here," Abi said.

* * *

Rebekah sat up that night, Hope in her lap as she wept silently into Rebekah's chest. "She hasn't lost color at all. If Miss Williams is so sure that it signifies an illness, then she's mistaken," Elijah sighed. "What did she say about the bite?" Rebekah pondered. "It's quite large, could be spotted right away," Klaus said as he took Hope from Rebekah. Hope continued to cry as her father lied her down in her crib when he stopped. She'd kicked one of her socks off, and her visible skin was red at the ankle. He slowly rolled up the leg of her pajamas, causing her to cry harder. There it was—the faint beginnings of two holes made with fangs. A golden liquid coated parts of the edges. "It's a bite," he said in alert. Elijah walked up to the crib with Rebekah to look. "That's not a vampire's bite. What is it?" Rebekah panicked. "We need to find Abigail. Now," Elijah declared.

* * *

 **Salem, Massachusetts, 1692**

She was the most beautiful girl in the village, the most troublesome. Seventeen was the age of marriage, but all were convinced she was not about to travel that path with a history of wicked schemes. "No parents, that one. Father abandoned her here with her mother a long time ago. Mother's working as a whore in Maryland now. Not long till the girl follows the footsteps of one of them," the villagers would say. Abigail stood just outside the farm she worked on as she sharpened one of the scythes for the fields her employer worked on. "You know there are stories about that forest," Abigail's best friend, Mary, spoke. "You're ridiculous, listening to Mercy's tall tales again? Mr. Proctor always takes me in there at night. The only beasts that lurk in there are little rabbits waiting to be eaten," Abigail chuckled. "You best be careful Abi, if Elizabeth Proctor-" "The old cow will never know about us. She's got her talons so deep into the lonely old Mr. Lewis, she's drawing blood," Abigail spat. Mary crossed her arms inwardly as she turned away to keep working. "Did you hear about Betty?" Mary asked as she untied the reins of the Proctors' horse. "Little weasel is faking her illness again," Abigail sighed as she looked at the forest over her shoulder. She frowned as a strange figure appeared in the dark of the forest's mouth. "She's just trying to get out of the work her parents are putting her through ever since Tituba ran off. I honestly—" Mary was cut off as a heavy wind carried off her coif in the direction of the forest. Abigail was gone. "Abi?" Mary called.

Abigail fearlessly navigated her way through the forests, smiling at the smell of rain. "Abigail," someone called from beyond the limits of the trees. She ignored it; it was only Mary trying to bring her back to the farm before she received any more beatings from their employers. She licked her lips as she kept her eyes open for any sign of the "beast" Mary spoke of. She turned slowly at the sound of creaking branches, then came a light rattle. An ophidian descended from the branches of the infant redwood to her left, and she watched as the shine of its jet black scales got caught in the spotlight of the surrounding sunset. It raised half its body to her, it's thicker abdomen vibrating with another deeper rattle of its tongue. "Perhaps you're the beast this village fears..." Abigail muttered as she continued to look at it without a hint of terror, "You don't seem that disquieting."

"Not quite," a dark whisper erupted from the echoes of the forest. Abigail's mischievous smile faded away as she looked around. "Who's there? Mercy Lewis, you rat! If you're following me..." she called. "Now, now. It's just us," the undertone came again. She swerved her head back to the snake as its gigantic body descended down the trunk of the tree. Her breathing quickened upon seeing its red markings. Symbols of which she'd only seen in the book they called sin: an astronomical documentation from the young Reverend Hale. "...Are you the devil?" she croaked. "Call me what you like...we all know the devil is a myth. Much like your God," it replied to her. Her hair fell out of its messy bun as she froze in not fear, but curiosity. The snake came closer and closer to her face as she watched it carefully. "...Then why do you speak to me? I'm not mad," she purred. "Because I was given the properties...I am only in the form of a message, not a demon. I beg you for your soul so that I can live," the serpent cried.

Mary appeared behind a tree as she shook upon watching the scene. The snake rattled and hissed as it inserted itself around Abigail's body. She spoke to it...as if it spoke back. "What do I get in return? How do you know I still have a soul?" Abi asked. The snake rattled again, but Abigail was in another picture. The snake wrapped around her shoulders as she shut her eyes, feeling the tickle of his rough skin on her neck and tip of its forked tongue at the top of her breasts. "Abigail I will never be able to touch you with my human hands, my human lips, graze your body with human eyes. But I can at least caress you with the ancient powers I have. I can't explain...I haven't much time. Just don't think. Give in..." the beast spoke softly.

Mary stepped out as she watched Abigail's next zombified actions. Abi's fingers reached up to the thin ribbons of her dress's deep neckline, as it slowly fell open with the assistances of her compressed chest. "Abi..." Mary choked out. The snake slowly slid down toward the skin between her breasts as it tangled its form around her small waist. Abigail grunted as it forced its colossal fangs into her chest, Mary running off as she went to tell Mercy and the rest of their friends: Abigail was "communing with the Devil."


	6. Pecus

**Salem, Massachusetts, 1692**

They feared her— _as if they hadn't before_. Rumor had it she confessed to witchcraft, but she went above and beyond on confessing to the things "the Devil" was making her do. An affair with John Proctor, finding solace with a local harlot and selling her soul which she could all only prove with the bites on her chest. She'd been taken to be tested by the church late one evening, undergoing the first trial the town would see for the next few months. He aged rather well, in Abigail's opinion; she was one to take notice of a man's physical strength and radiating confidence, but she also could tell when she'd met her match. Hale truly hated Abigail ever since the first day she appeared in town as a seven-year-old, killing his wife's hens for sport. The girl was more than just disturbed; if she had just been recently called upon by the Devil, then he didn't know what in the name of hell had been influencing her for the last decade.

Her head was submerged longer than a minute, the Reverend's hand caught firmly in the thick of her dark locks. People watched in a combination of joy and horror as Abigail was brutally tortured. She gasped for air as he brought her head up again. A Latin chant came from the depth of her chest as he suddenly shouted it in her ear. As much as she had shared, the one thing that remained unspoken were the other names of the witches in the village. It was no secret witches did exist. It was just the shock of hearing after so long of attempting to keep them out, they'd begun to wreak havoc on a puritan community. Abigail didn't believe in the church's teachings; if there was a God, he would not be as capricious and as much of a monster as she'd witnessed him to be. "Look at you, tired old man. You hate your own teachings, I know it. You do this to please," she spat. The Reverend ignored her as he began to drown her once more. Women rejoiced and men watched in wonder. After a shorter time than last, she came back up. "Goody Proctor!" she cried out.

"She's given a name!" some shouted. Families cried out in fear before all fell silent while the Reverend's eyes rolled over their heads. "Goody...Proctor!" he called. A critical Goody Proctor stood in the crowd as she looked around in terror, all heads turning to her. "No...No! I do not associate with that whore!" she retorted against the grabbing hands and weapon wielding believers. Abigail panted as she watched Goody Proctor get hauled away. Hale looked down at the exhausted Abigail. "You serve as a hunting dog now. No witch goes unnoticed. Understand?" he growled. He didn't give her time to answer, walking away as he left her soaked out in the freezing morning air.

* * *

Victor ran a finger over the bite on Hope's leg, her fussing incessant. "The gold is a venom. Not fatal but might as well be. We've definitely seen this before, but I don't know much. Not a bayou snake. It is from a reptile, however," Victor observed. Abigail came in as she stayed beside Victor. "Maybe you should let me explain it to them? Vladimir needs help looking through the journals," she suggested quietly. Victor nodded as he left the room, Abigail slowly looking over at Hope. "I don't even know where to start," she muttered. "Victor said you've seen this bite before," Rebekah said. "We all have. It's from a spirit," Abigail replied, "It doesn't go by a name, but it is everywhere. Vladimir calls it Pecus—Latin for 'beast.'" She gently ran a finger over the bite on Hope's leg, Hope immediately stopping her crying. Her red little face looked up at Abigail as she fell silent, kicking her feet in good health. "You speak of it like a person," Klaus responded. "It was once. It can speak but only to the people it chooses," Abigail explained. "Has it spoken to you?" Elijah asked. "If it hadn't, there'd be no urban legends to speak of. No vampires or wolves..." she answered.

Hope stood on her small feet, gripping the edge of the old crib. Her face was no longer red, and weepy eyes became curious once more. "How did you do that?" Rebekah asked. "The pain can be fixed easily. I can only imagine what it's like for her versus one of us," Abigail claimed. "What do you mean there'd be no urban legends?" Elijah questioned. "When I met Pecus, he told me he was the first of us all to have any sort of supernatural deformity when he was a man. Before he passed, he asked his supposed spouse to bring him a deceased snake to put his soul into, not wanting to cross over. That snake is more than three millenniums old," she told them.

Klaus picked up Hope as she clung to her stuffed wolf in her other hand, listening to Abigail as she handed Rebekah something. "It's dried vervain. It will hurt when you put it in the snake bite, but Pecus won't be able to smell his bite and come back," Abi promised, "Victor! Let's leave the family alone for now. We'll bring them your journals later." Victor appeared in the doorway, in his usual suspenders and henley look as he waited for Abi to take her leave with him. She handed something to Klaus as she looked at him and Hope. "You'll know him if you see him. And if you do see him...say this," she instructed. Hope muttered something that sounded like a goodbye as Abi smiled at her and left the room.

She put an arm through Victors as he took his pipe out once in the Compound courtyard. "When will you tell them what he wants with her?" Victor asked in an accent as thick as Abi's. Her long black-brown locks swayed gently in the warm breeze as they stepped out into the night. "How do you tell a frail family that a beast like Pecus preys on the genetically weak? They feel she was born a little wolf, but...Pecus only chooses humans. Humans close to death..." Abi swallowed. "You have a heart when you want to have one, Abi. But you can't let this time stop you from letting them see the full truth," Victor advised. She smiled as he lit the tobacco in his glass coffin-shaped pipe and placed her head on his shoulder. "I'll do my best," she replied.

* * *

 **Salem, Massachusetts, 1692**

The serpent would return with each dying sun, and Abigail heeded to his call with each witch the serpent made. Abigail, then Mary Warren, then Mercy lewis, then Betty Paris, and others. Abigail had the first coven the world had known. She was no longer the weak and the filthy. She was the powerful and the ruthless. She sat by the forest bonfire that the other girls danced around. The serpent dangled from a low branch behind her as it reared its head over her shoulder. "You've given me so much and asked for none in return except my blackened soul. Why?" she asked it. "Who says I've asked for nothing else? I asked for more girls and you brought them to me...even the powerful answer to someone above them," the serpent whispered to her. Abigail watched one of the girls take off their nightgown. "Then if you keep taking, I want something more," she announced to it. It waited for her request. "John Proctor. I want him to love me," she demanded calmly. She looked it in its glowing eyes as its tongue flicked out briefly on her cheek. "Why ask for a Proctor when you could have better?" the Serpent asked. "Like who?" she asked eagerly. "John Proctor thinks you a monster. Shouldn't monsters intertwine with other monsters in the moonlight?" the Serpent replied. "Is that what you believe?" she asked, "What if you found a human you couldn't have despite being madly in love with her?" The Serpent didn't reply as it looked toward its other creations surrounding the fire. "Humans expire...like you would have. Had I not made you," it simply replied before vanishing. Abigail looked around as she stood, the front of her dress unlaced and slowly unfolding like the wrinkles of her skirt. She took a breath as she looked over the girls.

Once morning came through, Abi still slept by the corpse of a bonfire with some of the other girls. Shouts from the village overrode her ears as she sat up slowly. "Hang him!" they screamed. Her breathing quickened as she got to her feet and ran toward the village quarter. She stopped upon seeing a body walk across the execution stage. _John Proctor_. "No...John!" she screamed. She shoved her way through the crowd as she gripped his ankle. "Abi," he recognized. His handsome bearded face peered down at her as she looked to Mercy Lewis beside her. "He's not a witch" she snapped. "They don't know that," Mercy chuckled darkly. Abigail frowned as she straightened. She had to think fast...John couldn't die. Not now. Abigail suddenly fell to the ground. "No! You stay away from me!" she screamed, pointing at Mercy. Mercy frowned looking around. "Abi, stop this," she hissed. "Please! Don't make me a victim like John! We've done nothing to hurt you!" Abigail still yelled. Everything fell silent as the mob moved away from the girls. John and the executioner watched from the stage, as well. Abigail easily evoked play-pretend tears from her eyes, Mary and a few other witches breaking through the crowd to see. "She's made John her puppet! Witch!" Abi yelped. "Get her!" Hale commanded. A woman in the crowd helped a crying Abi up as she held her away from Mercy Lewis, Abi's crying coming to a stop as she looked at Mary and the other witches over her shoulder with a look as vile as the Serpent's. John was released and replaced with Mercy Lewis. Abi began to move toward John but was stopped once Goody Proctor went flying into his arms. He didn't so much as look at her. A heavy breath heaved Abi's chest as the sound of Mercy's sudden hanging erupted from behind her. The trials had just begun.

Some few yards away from the mob, a hooded figure stood as he watched Abigail closely. "Excuse me, Sir," someone said as they almost walked into him. He turned away from the stranger as he continued to watch a troubled Abigail in her silent rage. Removing his hood, Vladimir turned away from the scene and moved toward the Proctor farm where he'd find Abigail later.

* * *

Abigail stood on her porch as the crystal wind chimes she'd hung long ago danced on a warm breeze above her head. Her long and ruffled red dress wasn't long enough to hide the little tattoo on her ankle of the element star. Her hair was wet from a bath just moments before. "If you don't come in here now, I'm locking the door on you," Vladimir said as he walked past the open doors. She didn't heed to him as she looked out in the distance, where a wolf's howl came around. "I feel like I failed to tell you everything...I was worried about what you and your family would think if I told you about Hope," she said a moment later. Klaus appeared to her left, leaning against the patio railing. She didn't look at him. "She wasn't common prey, was she?" Klaus asked weakly. Abigail played with her cross choker as she shook her head lightly. "...Hope was human. Pecus only wants humans. Now that he's bitten her, he's taken that away. I didn't know how to say it..." Abigail muttered. "Why not?" he asked. She walked over to him as she crossed her arms. "He doesn't want just humans...he wants them weak. She was an infant, so she's helpless and it could easily be mistaken that that's why he wanted her. But there's a pattern sometimes; he wants them mentally or physically ill, not far from death," she said truthfully.

Klaus' expression stayed stone-cold. "She won't die now...in fact, there's nothing he could do to her at this point, she's so young. But none of us can trust that. I'm sorry I didn't say it earlier," Abi told him quietly. "You assumed that the difference could go unnoticed," Klaus growled. "Not at all. I thought you might have known she was human, but looking back on what you'd said about her mother and your species...I wasn't even thinking how it could have been taken," she said apologetically, "Vladimir could help you from now on if you want. I don't know how much you trust me now."

"I'm not angry," Klaus said, "You kept your word about assisting Hope and that's what matter to us at the moment." She smiled slightly as she looked around. There was a silence when she walked back at her front doors. "I wouldn't stay out here very long. Those howls come a lot closer than that," she said, referring to the noise in the distance. "Is that an invitation?" he purred. "It's a suggestion. Go home," she scoffed. She turned to go inside, knowing he wanted to give into his carnal thoughts of her. She grabbed his wrist, stopping it before his hand could grab her arm. It didn't stop him. He pressed her against the wall of the house gently. "I'd think about leaving something to the imagination," she spoke as his face neared hers. His lips had hardly met hers as she turned away with a mischievous smile. She said goodnight while Klaus watched her disappear behind the doors of her home, smirking to himself a little.

He hadn't felt his heart beat this harshly during any encounter. He hadn't quite thought about a woman as much as he thought about her. He hadn't been foolishly in love with anyone quite like her before.


	7. Victor the Madman

Victor sat back in his room, a child's corpse on his surgeon table as he stared at it in grief. Rebekah appeared at the entrance from his glass patio doors as she looked at the child, as well. "What happened to her?" she asked gently. "Her name was Karina. She had a brain tumor. I removed it a few hours after she passed," Victor replied. Rebekah looked back at a tired Victor as he smiled genuinely at her before turning back to the corpse. "It's not fair to still be in pain after you've passed when there's more than a few methods that could have been used to stop it, even reverse it," Victor sighed. "So...you truly can restore life?" Rebekah asked. "Only their bodies...it's always a new soul they carry. It's so interesting...one's life cycle. They might have a new soul, but you can teach them who they once were... You can make a copy of the original soul, but the memories were a once in a lifetime collection," Victor marveled.

"I've never quite met a thanophiliac. Only very informally with the writings of Poe," Rebekah said as she sat behind him on a chair. "His books...they support my quiet profession. It's not thanophilia at all. It's the ability to trick its origin. Just like the supernatural. I'm devoted to the living and that's what I do with my work. No one has to die if they're not ready," Victor said, placing a hand on top of Karina's. Rebekah smiled slightly as she watched him covered the girl with a blanket. "Six years old. Would you think she lived a full life?" Victor asked Rebekah.

"If I can ask...if the things I've heard about Frankenstein go as they do in everyone else's literary memory...what helped along your—skill?" Rebekah asked curiously. Victor turned to her in his seat as he looked over Rebekah's flawless features tenderly. "Love and war," he replied.

* * *

 **London, 1892**

Death was a sweeping trend in the city, whether it was the sweeping epidemics of bronchitis or the one and only Jack the Ripper that worked quicker than any plague. Today, Victor was twenty years old— _today_ , marked the tenth year of his mother's death. His fingers worked quick and gentle on the keys of his piano, a tender butterfly flying around rapidly in a jar just next to the music sheet dashboard. The ballroom was his only escape from his greedy uncle and aunt, the bodacious party-goers who'd cared for him since his mother's death and his faceless father broke the promise of return. _Van Helsing_ , his mother said his surname was—he insisted she give Victor her surname, feared Victor would be sought out by Van Helsing's rivals. "Victor!" his aunt called. His playing grew more intense as the vexing sound of her cigar-ridden tone came closer and closer. She called his name again from the doorway. His playing came to an abrupt stop. "Mr. Kinton has arrived," she told him.

He sat face to face with a man in his late sixties, an ink jar sitting on the wooden table beside him and pen in his hand as he wrote something down in a journal. "Any...suicidal thoughts in the last ten days?" he asked Victor. Victor kept quiet although he shook his head faintly. Mr. Kinton, his psychiatrist, took a breath as he ended the answers to his questions with one last hard period. "Now. I want to talk about what you said earlier. About the girl you've been seeing—" "Mr. Kinton with all due respect, today I wasn't supposed to see you. Nor any day past today. My aunt should have told you I'm not longer a disturbed patient for you to nurture with comforting suggestion," Victor interrupted. "She did. But she, in turn, should have told you that you are to finish these sessions, or face an institution of treatment," Mr. Kinton responded. Victor was silent again. Mr. Kinton took off his spectacles as he examined the Frankenstein living room's grand fireplace, accented with gold and the finest black Cedarwood imported from Romania. "Victor, you were only recently diagnosed with schizophrenia. And you are fairly lucky it's treatable at all. Such cognitive dysfunctions you suffer from are not so adjustable. Going to an institution—in my opinion—is a waste," Kinton stated. Victor watched him blankly from over the top of the newspaper he was just beginning to read. "...Do you think the ripper really exists? Or is he a mental figure one can point fingers at?" Victor asked, "Cut up like pig parts at a butcher. Anyone could do that. But what about the person who's dead? Do you think they linger for a while after?"

Kinton blinked, unfazed by Victor's gruesome questioning. "It's very possible," he simply answered. Victor Frankenstein's obsession with the beyond lingered. He claimed there were others that walked on with the human race, drawing them like he did the portraits his uncle, a London policeman, had taken of recent kills. Kinton had seen these drawings, and Victor was the artist of his time, every detail of the human body so perfect they could have been real. "About the woman, Victor," Kinton reminded, "Your aunt said she's been visiting you a lot." "She's not been here in the flesh, Doctor," Victor said, lowering the papers for a moment to look at him. Victor's eyes carried dark bags, and his clothes riddled with wrinkles from being slept in. "Oh, so she's an imaginary friend of sorts? My daughter says those are the best kind," Kinton smiled. "I needn't you to give me the patronage meant for a child. She's in my head, and I know it's my defected brain. She tells me we're related...and for that fact, I am to beware. I haven't the slightest clue of what," Victor replied. Kinton frowned. "What does she look like?" Kinton asked. Victor was outstretching a piece of papyrus paper to Kinton before he could finish. Kinton looked it over, putting his spectacles back on to look at the girl's features. She had eyes as painfully sweet as a rabbit's, lips as faultless as Aphrodite's, and black hair like a raven's wings. Kinton chuckled slightly. "What's her name?" he asked. Victor held an impatient gaze as he leaned his face into his hand. "Abigail," he replied.

* * *

Victor had taken Rebekah out to the greenhouse trying to finish his story as he tended to the dying roses that hid among the living, much like his family among the locals in this god forsaken town. Rebekah was incredibly befuddled by the beauty of the greenhouse, stretching out like a hallway, cradling the perfection of the flowers Victor had raised himself. "Schizophrenia...you haven't the sign of it," Rebekah observed. Victor chuckled slightly. "That's the entire beast of the incident, so I thought," Victor replied, "As it turns out, Pecus was luring us together. Victor followed Abigail, Abigail followed me...it was a chain reaction…"

Rebekah frowned. "He expected you to fall apart on them. You were getting worse, weren't you?" She tried to guess. Victor cut out a fresh rose, examining it as he sighed. "I was actually beginning to learn the cost of my mental weakness," he replied.

* * *

 **London, 1892**

His aunt and uncle yelled and ranted and bickered all day at the subject of Victor so loud he could hear it from down the street of his home. He'd taken up an education paid for by Dr. Kinton in the anatomy department of a local college for apprentices. The doctor thought it would help alleviate the gruesome of his imagination, perhaps even the woman he'd been seeing he described to be a ghost. Victor was gone from mornings to nights, fascinated by forensics and surgical careers of each of his new friends. One problem remained: Abigail's image interfered too greatly with his thoughts.

He placed a surgical knife to the deep burn marks of the corpse's torso on his dissection table, slowly cutting in with such precision that the professor behind him complimented him as he rarely ever did any other student. But it started and it paralyzed him like a madman's drink. "Victor," the heavenly ghost's voice called sweetly. She appeared in the shadows of the light-spotted room, bare from the waist up with only her long spiral curls to cover her breasts. "You're not real," Victor heard himself whisper. "Am I not?" She breathed, "Don't fool yourself...you've asked for me in your sleep. You've been looking for me in the crowded streets and you don't even realize it. You know me." Her voice suddenly morphed with another. She rolled her neck back lustfully, a pitch black snake slipping down out of the maze of curls falling down her chest. "You...know me," the snake's male voice bellowed. Victor drew himself out of the trance, dropping his tools with a loud _clink_. Looking down at the body he worked on, his breathing slowed, glancing at his surroundings to make sure no one quite saw his moment of madness. He winced as he went to rub his neck, a small noise of pain coming from deep within his chest as he pulled his fingers back to look at the blood. Its warmth was creeping down into the white henley he wore, stopping along the crease created by his suspender and continuing down his chest underneath the shirt. His brows furrowed at the bit of gold liquid mixed within the blood on his fingertips. Had he been bitten? By what? He didn't think insects were powerful enough to leave two big bites... _No. This wasn't real and it would go away. It always went away_.

The early hours had broken free once he'd begun to walk home. His bedroom had a single gaslight to brighten the room. He remembered he once had paintings and priceless vases and a bookshelf of all the greatest scientific elements in history. His uncle suggested they be moved elsewhere until his mental illness could be determined as harmful in Victor's behavior and actions. "Victor? is that you?" his aunt called. He slammed his bedroom door shut, setting aside his briefcase full of studies and rubbing the bridge of his nose. The apparition of Abigail was standing by his window like she had most other nights. "Victor?" she said gently. "...How can you sound so clear? Or is my madness fooling around with my reality?" he questioned. She stepped towards him, her messy updo falling loose; he noticed the solid mocha fillings of its overall black shine, and it seemed as though he could truly wrap every ringlet around his finger. "You think me a ghost?" she asked. "That's all you are... Like a child, you're my imaginary friend. Good grief, I do believe I need that institution," he said hoarsely. She began to reach out, Victor waiting for her weightless touch. A jolt shot through his body as the cold of her hand met his cheek. "I don't imagine you could feel that when it's imaginary," she said gently.

Her hand drifted down to his neck and she looked at his blood-streaked henley beneath his heavy coat. "I'm too late," she breathed. "Too late?" Victor questioned. He groaned again as her fingers hit the bite, looking back at her as she returned a worried look.

* * *

"...I thought it was a physical bite he had to give," Rebekah noted. Victor handed her one of the roses without looking at her. "...Pecus bites humans with ailment...my ailment wasn't physical like the rest of them. Which if Abigail or Niklaus hasn't told you, is why Hope was bitten. She was a terminally ill human," Victor explained. Rebekah's expression changed slowly as he sat next to her. "And that's a piece of my reasons for taking on my craft—the fact of it all is that Pecus was the very first supernatural being, and wanted to build his breed like humans built humans. But he chose only those who were in the painful transition to death. I want to know what it is about the sick and past dead that intrigues his tastebuds," Victor replied.

She looked at the rose with a red rush in her cheeks until she looked back at him. "There's another reason," she observed. He nodded. "If you visit me again, I'll gladly tell it," he said shyly. She smiled slightly as she stood with him, walking with him to the door while he lit a cigarette.


	8. The Story of a Weak Heart

Abigail walked with Vladimir into the Quarter's heart, their expressions a matching tone of being unimpressed. "We've built up better," Vladimir commented, looking around at the oblivious tourists and glaring supernatural. Of course, people knew who these siblings were; the Mikaelsons trusted them and that was not a good thing. The people the Mikaelsons shook hands with were bound to be the Devil's rejects who fell from Heaven alongside him. "You don't honestly believe he'll know something about Van Helsing and Pecus," Vladimir muttered. "Oh, he won't. But his cards do," Abigail purred. Vladimir looked around, stopping outside a shop that Abi had gone into when he saw Elijah approaching him. He appeared to be wiping a red substance off his lips with a handkerchief. Vladimir stood tall as he said, "You remind me of my young self, Elijah. That's not a compliment." Elijah gazed inside at Abi then back at Vlad. "I haven't ever seen your family out in public," Elijah simply replied. Vladimir glanced at the pocket watch in the inside pocket of his blazer. Elijah noticed a gem emblem in the shape of a witch's hat at its face's center. "Abi's tarot cards were lost in the overseas travel from London. She needs them to perform most of her psychic spells," Vladimir enlightened. Elijah noticed some vampires out of the corner of his eye who'd caught the scent of his latest kill—the one he'd just left laying about in the few alleys over. "Quite superstitious, isn't she?" he asked Vladimir. Vlad looked at him and then the other vampires a ways away. "More like aware of the future's untrustworthy gifts," Vlad responded.

Elijah decided to follow Vlad into the shop, where they joined Abi, sitting with a kind elderly man she spoke in humorous whispers with. He laughed harshly, his wrinkled but strong dark-skinned hand patting hers as he then looked up at Vladimir and Elijah. "Mr. Dracula," the elderly man marveled. Vladimir dipped his head to the man genuinely as he put on a half-smile. "I wish you'd once call me Vlad, Edmund," Vlad smirked. Elijah frowned. He guessed some books were not as fictional as they were meant to be. "This is Elijah Mikaelson. You might have met him," Abigail introduced Elijah as she wrapped an arm through Edmund's arm. "Oh, I know his residence alright. Terrorized me and the missus over years like nobody's business. Them and that Marcel kid," Edmund accused, becoming a little less friendly. "Worry not, Edmund. He hasn't the time to threaten you so long as he doesn't want rebuttal from us," Abigail promised, shooting Elijah a cautioning gaze. Elijah simply blinked. Edmund lifted himself to his feet with Abi's help and the cane in his other hand as nodded to her. "Let me see about those cards. Might have the ones you gave me last," Edmund said, disappearing into the fluorescent green lighting of the back rooms.

"Dracula," Elijah said half-heartedly. "It's a pseudonym. Something no one will think of looking for. People like our father would find us," Vlad said, taking Abi's hand gently. "Your father...I thought there were just the three of you?" Elijah replied. "We've endured different mothers, but we have only the one father who, like it or not—loves his children a little too much," Abigail claimed. Elijah, about to say more, considered the loving cling between Vladimir and Abigail. Mention of their father struck something of a threatening cord with them _. Where did he recognize that from?_ Abigail turned at the sound of Edmund returning. He handed her a gorgeously painted wooden box, a sun and moon painted with Latin words between them. Abi smiled upon running her fingers over the box's surface. "Mr. Mikaelson," Abigail named, looking to Elijah. She nodded her head toward a table in the back of the small shop, Edmund knowing he should close the shop for a few minutes of privacy for his young friends. "They've been collecting dust, so they're stronger than ever. We'll use it on you since you have direct lineage to Hope," Abi stated. She took a seat at the table in the back. Edmund and Vladimir watching from afar. Elijah was distraught as Abigail took the cards from the box immediately and spread them into two perfect arches across the table. She then looked at him expectantly. "Please. Pick one," she requested. Elijah had begun to reach for the nearest card before she stopped his hand. "I _mean_ , relax yourself...pick the one that calls to you first," she muttered. Elijah did as told.

His breath slowed, his eyes roaming the aging purple tarot cards with the design of a grim reaper on each of the backs. His hand involuntarily gravitated toward the centermost card in the top arch. She watched him turn it over to reveal the card entitled "Death." Elijah looked to Abi in alarm, and she returned a lesser reaction. "It's reversed," she said, gesturing to the card he placed down. "It means there's a resistance to change...something or someone is unable to move on," Abi interpreted, "Is there someone you're missing Elijah? Do they keep you in the bad habits you have?" Elijah didn't have time to answer before Vladimir's phone rang. "Victor needs us," he sighed. "Is there something else that you might desire?" Edmund asked watching Abigail put her cards in a stack once more. "That's alright, Edmund. You've done enough—" Abigail couldn't finish before she felt the warm liquid of her own blood drip from her nose. "Abi," Vladimir panicked as he stepped toward her. She stared blankly at the blood on her fingers as Vladimir and Edmund raced to sit her down.

Her burgundy blood traced the lush of her peony lips and pale chin, now streaming from her nose and the corners of her crystal eyes. Her back suddenly hit the chair's body, as she inhaled loudly, her chest projecting as she looked viciously at Elijah. "What have you done, boy?" an anomalous moan came from Abigail. Elijah frowned. Vladimir slowly looked Abigail in the face as she looked back at Elijah. "I'll save you for last," she said clearly, ending it with a groaned. She clawed at her chest, Vladimir immediately unbuttoning the top of her shirt, to see her original bite from the Serpent beginning to bleed again. "Let her go...let her go!" Vladimir screamed as he grabbed Abi's neck. "What's happening?" Elijah shouted over them. Abigail suddenly tearing away. She clutched the skin over the top of her left breast, sliding her bra strap up as she looked at the cards. "...I forgot how vulnerable those cards make me unto others," she said calmly, wiping the blood from the snake bite marks. They'd gone back to a scar format by then. Vladimir exchanged glances with Elijah, lost in confusion. "Go find the littlest hybrid. The Serpent's taking to visiting hour," Vladimir demanded.

* * *

Victor let Niklaus in later that day, not surprised he'd come to see Abigail. "Elijah told me about the incident in the Quarter," Klaus stated. "...Abigail's health has been withering most of the day. She could be upstairs in her room," Victor said simply, still wiping the blood from his surgical scissors as he directed Klaus to the living area. Klaus looked to a bloody and sweaty Victor. He'd always seemed like a skittish and almost secretly crazed character, but Abi had told him before that it was the amount of time he spent with the corpses he had for friends that made him seem that way. "How did Pecus do it? Possession does not occur with just a deck of magic cards," Klaus said with a hint of cynicism. Victor looked up as Klaus followed him up the stairs of the house. "I wish I knew, Niklaus. Abigail's room is the last one down the corridor," Victor said simply, gesturing down the hallway. Klaus continued down the hall to a door that sat slightly ajar, but Victor stayed to watch. His eyes gave a cold glance as he felt mercy for Niklaus and his infatuation with Abigail. Victor knew above all the way that scenario went.

Abigail sat at her room's vanity, staring at the tarot cards before her in a sense of confusion. Klaus' eyes drifted to the dresser by the door, its surface hidden beneath a stash of drawings and spell books. He picked one up that she'd drawn of a man, his arms covered in scars that modeled a tattoo form; his eyes were a dizzy gray like the lead of the pencil, their emotion unforgiving and judgmental. "That's what the Serpent told me he looked like before," Abigail said without looking up. "I would have never took you for an artist," Klaus commented. She barely smiled as she walked over, looking over her drawings. "It's the only thing that keeps from having a fit sometimes," she said calmly. He picked up a smaller drawing, every detail done to a crisp on the illustration of a snake with midnight scales and a tongue as sharp and forked as the Devil's. It had to be Pecus. "Hope is alright?" she asked softly. "Elijah told me about your violent premonition when visiting Edmund Cole's business. Pecus breaking through the veil when you attempted to foresee my daughter's future health. Luckily, nothing has come of her in the last few days..." Klaus told her. She nodded softly. "It's hard enough with the pain that bite brings. I promised Elijah we wouldn't let it get worse than that," Abi noted. He smiled genuinely at her as she put the tarot cards away in the drawer next to him. His gaze snapped back to her drawings, when she moved some out of the way. "Your kin apparently takes delight in keeping this house sky-scraped with portraits. Why not a landscape? An object?" Klaus asked as he looked to her. Her lips parted.

"I only draw dead things...all the people I've drawn are... _or almost are_ ," she answered. Klaus' eyes quickly roamed her room; she was truthful about that. Images decorated her walls high with so many familiar faces from the French Quarter itself, but there was one drawing of a child who looked very similar to Abigail herself that caught his eye. "It's a rather strange continuity of post-mortem traditions...but I suppose everyone has different views of what takes their breath away," Klaus responded, looking at her softly. She wasn't looking at him, however. Her eyes were on a drawing of the little girl, with dark hair and depressing satin eyes. "We have a saying in this family. 'To be beautiful is to be almost dead.' Some of these people are now centuries old...and I drew them before they were gone. Most of them sat for me when they were due to expire within just a few days, but some on the sullen verge of giving into their vampire transition—they may not look so flawless, but when you look at them living their last bit of pain, you see a more golden verse of their lives. That's what we learned through the Serpent's unmerciful appetite," she said calmly.

He gaped as he listened to her intently. Abigail was surely as used to the darkness as the rest of her siblings, but she made him think in ways he certainly never thought. He never gave regard to the lives of minorities with all the power he kept, he looked at them as vengeful and crushable beings who didn't understand anything about him or his family's necessities. He never asked, he took. He never loved, but he let others dwell their passionately loving or hateful thoughts on him. It was out of a problematic and anger-filled being that he lived as a tyrant king. Abigail proved to be of equal caliber, but to her, every life and every friend and foe meant something. In that moment, he wanted to be like her. He wanted to know what gave her patience, what brought her piece when he knew she had her own suffering. And so he posed a final, risky question: _"How sick were you when Pecus took your humanity?"_

She turned to him from the picture on her wall, and he could see there was a spark of emotion in this apathetic air Abi usually held. "My heart was failing," she spoke gently, "I couldn't run through the fields with my friends or roam London's streets, and I couldn't leave my bed—because death was coming for me. It went on like that until I was seven and my mother died. I was brought to Salem where there were apothecaries, but their remedies never lasted long...that was the only place where Pecus became a savior," she said tediously. He watched as she walked around him, sympathy coating his expression and his views on Abi. "Of my family and my village, I was born weak," Klaus found himself reminiscing, "My father loathed me, not all because I was not birthed his descendant, but because I felt too much. I might even have been my mother's reason for creating or—at least getting inspiration for a spell to turn our family immortal. I didn't believe there was a hope for me until I welcomed it too heavily."

She looked at him over a shoulder cloaked with thick locks of darkest brown. "Why are you telling me this?" she asked. He swallowed. "I've come to admire you. It's difficult to find someone you identify with in this world, but you have so little in common simultaneously," he answered. She stood still, her stare frozen on his own as she said nothing for the first few seconds. "How do you know I'm trustworthy?" she asked. He smirked at little. "Vampires are quite dexterous in attaining notice of a tall tale, Love. I haven't heard one from your lips," Klaus told Abigail. Without smiling, she made a small scoff of a laugh and nodded. "Well, Victor does say the amount of honesty I carry is like a beesting at times, if I may forewarn you," she replied. He stepped closer, barely fazing her as he looked into her dormant blue eyes. "I might have to take advantage of that," he purred, "Was the scene in the greenhouse honest?"

Abigail tilted her head as a few curls came barreling down her shoulders at the microscopic movement. "What do you think my answer is?" she questioned. It only took a second for his lips to come crashing down on hers as she shut her eyes gripping the back of his neck when he brought her closer, the aggression of her nails digging into his skin only encouraging the linger of his kiss.


	9. Hell-Given Warning

Hope stood up in her crib as healthy as could be. Her mouth grazed over the softness of a stuffed wolf she held and her eyes glanced around the room. The wind whistled like a bird just outside. Her health had considerably arose for the better since Abigail's visit, and for that, the Mikaelsons found Abigail could be trusted, despite her brothers' questionable behaviors. Hope used the rim of her crib as support as she danced on weak little legs around its perimeter looking for a way to get attention. The wind's whistle came in form of a hiss as her window sudden opened with a burst of wind. Her little glazed irises searched the window for a visitor, but there was no solid matter to follow the venomous noises.

* * *

Abigail stood in confusion among a golden, dewy forest she recognized greatly. "Back to admire your handiwork? Returning to the scene of the crime," Pecus' smooth voice declared from a distance. "It had to be done, you said so yourself, Beast," Abigail replied sharply. "You have the audacity to call one a beast when they seek to enrich their own lives when you do the exact same," Pecus replied. "You've told me nothing of what you have planned for my siblings and that sweet little girl," Abigail's slick British accent pointed out. A thin branch clipped between her slender fingers as Pecus rolled his body down from a tree beside her. His tongue flicked in her direction as she looked at it from the corner of her eye. "It's to your own gain?" she asked. "Somewhat. More of honor," Pecus replied. "What honor would you be seeking in a form like that?" Abigail asked. "I love you the most, fair Abigail. Can you keep my secret?" the serpent asked. "You don't deserve my silence," she simply replied.

"I want to tell you the story of a man named Abraham and his distant kin... _Percius_ ," the serpent began. Abigail's eyes narrowed as she looked back at the serpent. Behind her, an illusion of the singing, clueless children of Salem village played like they once had over the hills of the Proctor farm they belonged to.

"Your father gets his cowardice from my blood. I was weak at mind, heart, lungs, and feet. Lived in a village just like your own, where your father abandoned you with your greedy mother," the snake's disembodied voice spat as it fastened its long, nightly scaled body around the branches of the tree. Its head reared down by one of the imagined children playing with a doll. "So young I came upon a serpent with eyes as red as an apple and body as murky as the depths of a coal mine. One bite was all it took to take away my lack of mobility, lack of breath, lack of hope. Lightning rose from my fingers and the knowledge from the minds surrounding me would rise from clockwork in my brain," Pecus purred. "You became the unwritten first immortal from an animal's bite?" Abigail scoffed. "Your eyes will not believe what it hasn't seen. My brothers and sisters were all like me. Something in our mother's lineage just wasn't right. None of us were healthy. They became like me because _I showed them how_. You would not exist if I hadn't. The Mikaelsons wouldn't exist if I hadn't. That's where my cause arises from scrap," Pecus told Abi. Her curls danced over her shoulders as she turned to him fully, slightly leaned her head back as the snake's head now reared inches over the surface of her face so he could look into her eyes. "Powers don't just grow from seed anymore, my lovely Abigail. There were ones before us who kept themselves away from the mediocre lifestyles they didn't know. They seek to stop me and I can't stop that unless I have the numerous vessels awaiting me for when the very vessel I took from a predatory beast fails. If I must kill my own lineage, I will. If I must take new generations with it, _I will_ ," Pecus finished. "The ones before us. You think you can outrun them for the sake of saving yourself? I wouldn't play it off as if you were trying to preserve an entire population. We know your games. So who are they? The ones that came before us," Abigail scowled. "I think you already know. Sweet dreams, Abi. Enjoy your Salem," Pecus ended as he disappeared.

* * *

Hope gurgled as she watched a shadow appear on the wall over her crib, a rattle following it. Rebekah appeared in the doorway, her mind trying to wrap around the feeling of something being wrong. The shadow had gone and the serpent's call going mute. The window banged against the wall over the crib after being forced open by the strong and warm winds of Louisiana.

* * *

 _London, 1892_

"Forgive me if I still find it bizarre a woman named after a convicted witch has shown up in my dreams and now on my doorstep, but shouldn't we be speaking more of how we are so-called family rather than what I do for a living?" Victor spoke as he sat at a small table with Abigail. The café was small, but comforting on a cloudy such as that one. Abigail, leaning forward in her tight and low-cut dress, sipped her morning drink as she looked out the window. "I've told you all you need to know. It's me and you, dearest. Now we're a part of the supernatural family, which you seemed eager to believe," Abi said vaguely. "I haven't any powers," Victor swallowed. "Perhaps you haven't found them yet," she responded.

"So then did you use yours to worm your way into my brain?" Victor scoffed. "Yes. I did. That's how you've known me since you were at the peak of adolescence. That's why we're sitting here now," Abigail answered. Victor finished off his drink as he smoothed a hand over his slicked back hair, freeing a thin strand in front. She watched him as she leaned her face on her hand over the table. "You're working on the cure to death you once told me in your dreams. Have you ever considered that's where your abilities come into play," Abigail purred. Victor set his fist gently as he tried to comprehend all she'd told him the night prior. "Victor, you've received a mark of power. But it's also a mark of suffering, I will be wise to add. If you wonder why I bring all this in now, it is because you are the purest of our sibling pairing," she continued, "That's a very big deal." He looked up at her as he went to say something, but then a completely different sentence left his lips. "How do I know you're really my sibling and that this isn't a way of luring me into your predatorial trap. Meat to the beast?" Victor spat. "Do you think I'd harm you? I know you wouldn't hurt me," Abi sighed. "I never felt like you would in my dreams, but the real world is a cruel place. There are things even the greatest minds haven't a clue about. I think you're one of them. My first impressions and thoughts could be a mirage," Victor replied. "What were your first impressions and thoughts?" Abigail asked interestedly.

They had begun to gather their things when Victor took the lead in leaving the café as the young Abi followed him. "Over the years...they've—changed," Victor breathed once they reached the niche entrance of the hidden diner, stopping before the sidewalk with Abigail. Abi's genuine stare turned into an intrigued and eerily faint smile. "I'm gaining a feeling it was more of a benign impression than present day," she almost joked. Turning to him, she was greeted by the sudden grip of his large hands on her small triceps and his lips on hers, the wind picking up and forcing the waterfall of her curly black locks off her shoulders. She kissed back after a while, placing a hand on the side of her face as she pulled away to look at him. Victor seemed to be at a loss for words at her reciprocating actions when he took a breath and regained his stern countenance and looked around. "I'll get us a coach," he said, Abi watching him walk down the road to gain notice of a carriage. She smiled slightly as she watched Victor go, but it quickly faded away upon the specific thoughts going through her mind. She felt the harsh embrace of a stranger's shoulder crash into hers as she turned to look at a man in a similar shade of black that covered him head to toe. "I'm sorry, my lady," his light matching accent rolled. She nodded as she looked him in the eyes before watching him browse her features and then walk away. Her brows furrowed slightly as she got into a carriage down the way with Victor.

The stranger paused as he stopped midstep down the street and then turned to watch her carriage ride off into the foggy distance with a smirk on his face.

* * *

Victor carefully drew a deep incision in his latest corpse's stomach, blood covering his face and hands. Klaus, invited by Vladimir, stopped in the doorway as he watched Victor carefully. Victor said things under his breath, blocked out by the noise of thunder outside. Stepping closer, Klaus looked over the corpse, which Victor had reconstructed perfectly. "What of the other bodies you keep?" Klaus asked to make conversation. "Abigail brought me Carrion beetles back from Cairo last she went. They eat away the skin and organs of any moving, breathing being. Even vampires. Makes it easier to bury them in the pit underneath my greenhouse," Victor said, "Why are you here?"

"Elijah trusts your brother enough to let him look over our mother's grimoire," Klaus said straightforwardly. Victor didn't take his eyes off the corpse. "And you're here on accounts of my sister?" Victor guessed. "We've grown to be good friends, I think," Klaus replied cockily. "I wouldn't be so quick to expect she's alright with short-term. I've seen Abi tear apart a man's heart, not to mention lifestyle because he thought she could be subdued," Victor said, not taking his eyes off the corpse. "I gathered as much based on the last month we've known your family formally. "Are you sure you can handle her, Mr. Mikaelson? You don't seem like the man for the job," Victor sighed. "I had no idea this speech would be coming from you, Victor," Klaus smirked. Victor sudden set his surgical knife down with a loud _clink_ as he stared down Niklaus for a minute and then moved to a cabinet behind himself. "Abigail's a puzzle, Mr. Mikaelson. You've got pieces, but none match," Victor said calmly.

Klaus, licking his lips, looked down at the corpse as he leaned on the open table edge next to it. "I sense some tension over the topic," Klaus said. "I'm telling you what I know, what all the men and women on the planet already know. You've got one life to live, Niklaus. If you choose to experience it with Abigail and keep on a steady path, you better be head over heels for the lass. _Or else we're going to have to ask you to start digging your own grave,_ " Victor warned maliciously, "Do I make myself perfectly clear?"

Klaus, grin becoming less confident, stared Victor down. "Is that a threat, lad?" Klaus asked. "Not a threat. I have no dilemma with you Niklaus. You need to understand the amount of hospitality you've already received from us. _Now_ you need to understand in this family, in the place where we come from...Abi's not just some witch from a history book. She's hell-given warning," Victor finished.


End file.
